Dish Network suffers from multi-day customer service and website downtime

In the last few days a “internal system problem” has rendered many of the services and websites operated by satellite television provider and Sling TV owner Dish Network inaccessible. The outage began Thursday morning when Dish customers began reporting a variety of issues. At down detector And Twitter, there are complaints about people not being able to access IPTV services like Watch ESPN using their Dish credentials. Other customers say they can’t log into their online accounts to pay for monthly TV and cell phone bills. The outage appears to be affecting nearly every part of the company’s footprint — including Boost Mobile, the prepaid wireless carrier that Dish bought in 2020 — and its call centers, which have been unavailable since the outage began.

“Thank you for your patience,” a banner above it Dish website says. “We have a system issue that our teams are working hard to resolve.” Boost the mobile site offers a more helpful explanation. “Due to internal system issues, some users may experience difficulties with their Boost Mobile accounts, paying their bill, or reaching Boost Care,” the landing page reads. “Please rest assured that if your account is affected, your wireless service will not be affected by these issues and your service will not be terminated due to non-payment.”

There was conflicting information about the cause of the failure. When the company’s troubles began on Thursday, The desk reported that they were not the result of a cybersecurity incident. But early Saturday morning computer beeps said the outage was due to a likely ransomware attack. A source told employees’ computers that they are showing “blank icons,” suggesting they’re infected with malware. A separate source said Their manager informed them that the outage was “caused by an outside villain, a known threat agent,” and that Dish had yet to figure out how they had gained access to its internal systems.

“We identified a system issue with our corporate network on Thursday that continues to impact internal servers and phone systems and we are actively investigating. Our DISH TV, Sling TV, wireless services and data networks continue to function and operate,” a Dish spokesperson told Engadget. “However, some of our corporate communication systems, customer service functions and websites were affected. Our teams are working hard to restore affected systems as quickly as possible.”

Dish declined to confirm whether the outage was due to a ransomware attack, but hoped to share more information soon. Accordingly The edgeAs of Friday afternoon, the company had not spoken to employees about what was going on with its internal systems. Many remote workers are reportedly unable to perform work due to issues with Dish’s internal VPN service. Engadget will update this article as more information becomes available.

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